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Forums - General - What is your take on evolution/old age earth?

Slimebeast said:

People need to understand the flawed thinking behind a "succesful species" and species owning their niche so that they "don't have the need to" evolve into something else.

Let's look at bacteria again. I acknowledge they are highly successful. They own tons of niches! We all accept this. But, here's the thing - the one bacteria, or the little isolated population of bacteria behind a certain rock, or in the stomach of a rabbit, or whereever, for that particular isolated population it doesn't matter if bacteria as a group of organisms are successful or not! You don't know if that particular population is successful right there, right now! They might not be. You must realize that every single bacteria is an independent entity, every single one of them has the potential to break away from it's current niche and conquer another one. You can't deny these guys the same chance to diversify under the exact same rules that you base the evolution of all life resulting in extreme variation of life on earth. There's always a niche out there to be conquered for any individual or group of individuals! There's always environmental factors at work against every individual, selecting  and giving potential for an individual or population to mutate and evolve into something different.

It annoyes me that evolutionist are so blind to this fact. And I meet the same flawed thinking every time.

Evolutionists are not blind to this fact.



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By the way we know gravity is real just like we know life is real not gravity=evolution. Now exactly what is gravity , just a law or a real force is debateable. Notice how some will compare gravity to  evolution instead of comparing it to living things. No matter if we believe life is ID or an accident it doesn't stop things from living.



Slimebeast said:
ManusJustus said:
Slimebeast said:
ManusJustus said:

Concerning the mystery of human morals, other animals like monkeys and lions live in groups and don't kill or harm each other (atleast not anymore than moral man).  If large groups of monkeys can live peacefully while sharing food, grooming each other, and having recreational sex, then it doesn't seem like rational man has much to brag about.

My short objection on your reply:  morals =/= behaviour based on instinct.

Please explain.  Even in vastly different cultural groups, humans have similar group behaivors.  Its wrong to kill for Aborigine Australians just as it is for Western Europeans (with some differening justifications each make ofcourse).  How can you consider this behaivor an instinct for humans but not for monkeys?

In fact, monkeys and humans have a lot of 'morals' in common.  They share resources (food and tools) and do not kill others in their group, but they go to war with other groups for land and resources.  Not much different than what humans do.

Your examples of social communities (like apes) that work well together for the best of their survival though social interactions, have their behaviour and rules based purely on instincts.

But the rules and behaviour in human societies are not only based on instincts. They are also based on morals, which requires intellectual thinking and decisions and is something entirely different than genetically programmed instincts.

Humans work well together for the best of their survival through social interaction as well.

You can't argue that there is a gentically programmed instinct that causes a monkey to share his rock hammer and anvil with another monkey when asked.  If you do argue that this is an instinct, then you can't argue that everything humans don't act by instinct.

Here's a video showing human behaivors of sharing and jealousy in monkeys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY  Heck, that first monkey has more 'morals' than many humans...



As one scientist warn before be careful impling morals to animals especially those that have been influenced by man. There is no doubt we, humans, can change animal behaviour including leaning toward our morals (good or bad).



highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:
highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons and postulate human evolutionary trees. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

I'm sorry but your logic doesn't work. By your reasoning an theory can't be valid unless it answers 100% of the questions posed to it.

Well I've got news for you, the world doesn't work like that, and if that were the case you would have dismiss pretty much all science.

Science is the search for an answer, and something like most fields of science evolution doesn't have a simple answer for everything; so we have to research, find and interpret evidence, and discover the answer; this has been an ongoing process for the last 150 years. No one is going to say the current model of evolution is 100% complete, and I'm sure everyone will happily admit that there are things we just don't know about.

What we do know is that a lot of evidence supports the theory of evolution, we know it has happened and we know it is happening. We can't explain all the details, but more than enough evidence exists to show that it does happen.

Applying your logic to another situation could be done with gravity. We know gravity exists, but don't know everything about it (not by a long shot). Does this mean that gravity doesn't exist because we don't know everything about it, despite enough evidence existing to prove its existence? No. Of course not.

Yet you've applied this same logic to evolution.

In my opinion you have a restricted view on reality.

So just because science is limited because of technological reasons, time, physical reality and whatever, you just resign and stop to ponder about our existense?

I don't work like that.

I have reasons to believe in a God, based on stuff we've gone through before and other stuff I haven't told you.

A human individual makes up his or her world view through experience, knowledge, observation and by logically putting it all together in your intellect, okay?

I can't wait for the 1000th monkey skeleton to be found which would prove beyond reasonable doubt that we in fact evolved from slime, through chimps to humans without any unnatural events or divine intervention, and meanwhile just "trust" the palenthological community based on a few fracture skulls and rely on their human error and bias. I'll be long dead by then.

Same with these what I choose to call "mysteries", unanswered phenomenons of reality that are very important in existential thinking and your world view. (big bang, something-out-of-nothing, the concept of the conscious mind, abiogenesis, absolute morals, etc etc all these questions that science has no answers to).

I simply can't wait for "hard" evidence for the above important phenomenons, I have to make up my world view now, based on the knowledge I have, the knowledge that we have today. And my conclusions are that God exists, he is reveled through Jesus and the current evolution theory doesn't fit very well with that. And without hard proof I have no strong reasons to believe in something that contradicts the rest of my world view.

Yes science is limited by certain factors, all fields are. But the range of the limitations is what is important, having limitations is not an absolute state.

For some fields we can only merely speculate on what is occurring due to a lack of evidence caused by extreme limitations. Other fields are limited, but not limited to any major degree, so we have enough evidence to come up with a reasonable and logical explanation. Evolution falls under the latter.

Yes we have a lack of fossils the further back through time you go (as in hundreds of millions of years) for various geological reasons, that is a limitation; but that limitation does not hinder the fact that enough evidence has been collected to show that evolution occurs.

Even so, we will work hard to overcome that limitation so that we can better define and understand the concept of evolution.

The answer is not complete, but it's good enough to understand what happens. We just always want a better one.

If I can suggest some reading, Isaac Asimovs The relativity of wrong.

...

Palaeontology goes through an extremely rigorous peer review process with nothing being accepted without hard evidence, and takes years of dedication by millions of people around the world, and has done so for centuries. I don't know why you seem to think that it is guess work with an error rate of 99%.

And I don't "trust" these people, I am occasionally sceptical about claims I hear made, and I certainly don't think they hold all the answers. But I am willing to give them credit for their hard earned expertise.

...

I've said it before Slimebeast, and each time I'm a little worried about offending, and I apologise if I do. But I shall say it again anyway. I think that you have been presented with enough evidence for evolution over this website (and through other sources I imagine), and I know that you're a very bright person and fully understand what you are being presented with, but you find it conflicting with your faith. As such, whenever I debate you I always feel as though you feel as though you are compelled to refuse evolution, regardless of what you are presented with. Your last paragraph pretty much summed this up for me.

About paleonthology. The humanoid tree of evolution is very shaky. The lack of missing links, the reinterpretation of fossils (like the one recently, a sensational bipedal guy is now considered four-pedal) is disturbing.

Dont worry, you dont offend me. As Ive said before, your instinct about me, it has some truth. I have a sceptical default stance yes, due to my religious world view. But I can play around with different scenarios, independent scenarios in my head at the same time. Like say.. the topic of evolution of morals as an example. I can see the logic up to a point (the evolution model, how morals evolved). But if I can sneak a big question mark or some doubt in there, why whouldn I? As long as I can truthfully say to my self that it's relevant and not just a "god of the gaps" cop-out.  You would too if it was a topic you were very sceptical of. Look, even Dawkins admits that the evolution of morals and altruism is very puzzling. So why do we never see those sort sof confessions by the evo-defenders in forum discussions like these? So it goes both ways, the bias and the rigid positions.

Especially in the bacteria example (lack of diversity and complexity). I actually find it laughable how the evo-guys refuse to acknowledge that problem no matter how I try to present it right under their noses. It's dishonest and weak, and proves that they're just as religious as I am. These debates are comedic from my point of view too.



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This topic is exhaustive. I wish it was easier to debate, more fluid than to throw down text not even in your own language. Bedtime now for me, and tomorrow I cant reply until I get home from work very late in the evening.



In my mind morals come from humans, not god. Other social animals work together for the common good. Why should we be any different? We simply have more developed brains and thus the level of complexity in our society and the morality that goes along with it is neccesarily more complicated and nuanced.

As Christopher Hitchens says "Name one moral action that a believer can do and a non-believer cannot". Its simple, there isn't a single example (at least not one I've heard). And since there isn't, its not a very big leap to then assert that if an atheist can be just as moral as a theist then morals don't come from theology. They must come from something else.



Slimebeast said:

The lack of missing links.

So God kills every living thing on Earth every few hundred thousand years, then creates new but similar life on Earth?

Or did the millions and millions of other species that once inhabited this Earth miss the Ark?  With so many fossils out there, the world would have been very crowded and I'm sure there was a long line to get on the boat.  Let's not think about the fish that didn't make it past the flood and the fresh water and salt water problems, it would be best to ignore that.



In my honest opinion, why evolutionists claim that there is so much evidence for that theory, and none for creationism, is something that I just can't fathom. Simply put:

How does it even happen? Natural selection does just what it says; it selects from existing traits. It doesn't create new ones. No matter how a species mutates, whether through deletion, repetition, or interchange it never involves addition.

In what order did it happen? The human body has eleven systems. Ten are needed to survive, and the the other one to reproduce. So which one evolved first? They all need to work together. Even with systems, various organs are useless without the other pieces.

On top of that, there's one system that's useless without another system in a different body! How could the original species evolve two different sets of reproductive systems? Their interdependence means that they would have to evolve in the same environment at the same time. And even if that happened, how could each of them be more beneficial than asexual reproduction, but not more than each other?

How did it start? If evolutionists claim that they know a situation in which life can spontaneously arise from non-life (a reducing atmosphere and whatever else), then why can't they just lay our doubts to rest by recreating that situation in a lab and producing life?

I understand that scientific theories often don't answer every question, but at least they answer some fundamental questions. This theory of macroevolution just doesn't seem to answer anything.

Creationism isn't about a blind faith in any particular supernatural power, such as the God of the Bible or anyone else. That's a different discussion for a different time. All I'm saying is that I believe bacteria only produce bacteria and humans only come from humans, and that it makes more sense than the idea that humans come from bacteria.



"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' " ~John 14:6 (NKJV)

Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:
lestatdark said:
Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

You're going down roads that you cannot possibly explain. Bacteria are the order of living organisms that suffer most evolution, due to the incorporation of extra set of genomic chromossomes, the plasmids, that confer them evolution patterns way ahead of Eukaryota cells. 

Also, the fish you're talking about, the Coelocanth, isn't an exclusive case of staggered evolution. Sharks have pretty much stayed the same, with very few minute mutational changes in the species range. Crocodiles as well.

And yet Bacteria's can't talk. They're still stuck at the micro level. (don't try with the "evolution has no goal" or "germs are already successful, they own their niche, they don't need to talk or to play video games").

Sharks and Croqs have the same problem as the Coelocanth, yes.

They are already more successful than any other living being.

Why? Because Bacteria are pretty much the most adaptable living being. They can live in environments ranging from pH 1 to pH 14. They can live in temperatures as low as -80º C to as high as 140º C. They can live in extremely low pressure areas like the top of the Himalayas or as high pressure as the bottom of the Marianna Abyss. They range from all the trophic, chemical and non-chemical, sustainable metabolism and pretty much are the only living being that can non-generational shift to adapt it's own genomic resistances 

High though process that Homo Sapiens are capable of is just a by-product of evolution. While it is important for humanity per se, for the ecological super-power, bacteria, it's pretty much useless.

Anyway, this is a pretty useless debate. Me, as a geneticist, have access to a vaster amount of information, knowledge and personal experience in this issue (bacteria evolution and genetic similarities) than you. I'm not saying that you're wrong and that i'm right, i'm just saying that you're debating an issue that you cannot possibly win. And that will only end in fruitless struggle that I won't indulge in this topic. 

You cannot win the debate either.

Yes, you just showed how extreme the environmental pressure is on bacteria, with them being present in all possible environments on earth. That's the point, to address how successful and prevalent bacteria are and show its implications in the context of the rate of evolution that would be expected from them. Despite bacteria being everywhere, in massive numbers, under all sorts of environmental pressures, yet they have remained on the primitive micro level, having only conquered niches on the single-cell micro level.

Because the individual bacteria doesn't care if bacteria as a group of organisms have conquered the earth. Every individual of bacteria tries to survive, and every individual bacteria has potential to evolve into something different, something more complex. But they don't. Why is that? You need to ask yourself why bacterial evolution is so limited, so narrow, compared to the eukaryotic line of life. 

Bacteria is the prime example of (so called) micro-evolution never becoming "macro-evolution".


Bacterial evolution is limited? You sir know nothing about bacterial evolution. 

Eukaryotic life and evolution is but a small speck when compared to the amount of evolution that bacteria have suffered. If you compare the sheer number of species that bacteria and microbial life has managed to successfully create with the amount of evolution and different species that eukaryotic life has created, it would make complex life pretty laughable.

Human though processing is as essential to human evolution as plasmids recombination and transposition are to bacteria evolution. 

As I said, I'm not going dwell further on this topic. You're speaking about things you know nothing about. Come back to me when you have basic genomic knowledge, and comprehension as to how bacterial genomics are the founding steps for understanding our own genomic evolution.

I don't like your arrogance. You're not as intelligent as you imagine.

You don't understand your own field of study. I am not the best man to explain things, but I am amazed that you fail to see my point.

One one hand you are perfectly fine with the diversity of life on our planet. If someone would ask you, "how come all this variation, all these species and organs and genes and proteins from a single ancestor?" your reply would be, "mutations and natural selection over a long period of time".

But on the other hand, amazingly, despite working in the field in question, you fail to see the mystery of why bacteria haven't evolved into anything like that diversity described above, despite trillions of chances, despite an absolutely massive gene pool being present in all possible living conditions, having a high replication & mutational rate and being affected by extreme environmental & selective pressures during a very long time.

 


It isn't arrogance. I'm perfectly fine admitting other possibilities, but when it comes to my field of study, then it's pretty obvious that I know more things than you do, thus it's only natural that I find some blatant gaps on your logic. And you're trying to imply something that isn't correct.

As I told you before and what you cannot seem to grasp, not because of lack of intelligence, but will to comprehend, is that bacteria doesn't need to evolve into complex organisms. Most species of bacteria are able to do, at the ribosomal, lysosomal and plasmid levels, what eukaryotic cells can only do when they're specified for a single purpose. 

For example, Cyanobacteria, are both able to do photosynthesis, ATP production and nitrogen fixation from organic sources in a single cell. Plants on the other hands, require a high number of specified cells to do it. While Eukaryotic cells have had a more complex evolution, solely on the fact specified eukaryotic cells can agglomerate to a large amount of tasks, they still lack some several means in which Bacteria can single handedly do similar tasks in a single Prokaryotic cell. 

One of the most extreme cases of bacteria dominant evolution over Eukaryotic cells is from the deinococcus radiodurans bacteria. It's extreme resistance to nuclear ionization radiation, ultraviolet and superoxide reducing agents it's mainly due to the synergy between it's chromosome and the two prominent plasmids, one of them is one of the largest plasmids in all bacteria. 

To draw a comparison, they can suffer an ionization radiation of over 5000 gy with almost 100% survival rate. In contrast, 5 gy is enough radiation to kill a human being, 600 gy kills almost all bacteria and 4000 gy kills the second class of bacteria most resistant to radiation.

This capacity has been an astounding discovery in the scientific community, due that the mechanisms for DNA repair that this bacteria has, has become one of the most valuable tools for bioremediation studies. 

As I told you, to consider bacteria has having limited evolution is pretty much a very naive and based on a very limited knowledge pool comment. You're drawing conclusions that complex life = more developed, which is extremely false. 



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